Following the trend of distributions scheduling themselves around KDE releases, Ark Linux has released their first stable version, Ark Linux 2005.1. The goal of Ark Linux is to build the easiest to use GNU/Linux distribution while keeping it technically sane.

Ark Linux 2005.1 is built around the latest desktop technologies, including KDE 3.4, OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 (a preview of 2.0 is also available on the Ark Extra Software CD), glibc 2.3.4, X.Org 6.8.2 and Linux 2.6.11.

The base install CD of Ark Linux contains everything the average desktop user will need - other tools such as compilers and development programmes,
additional games and support for additional languages are available on the
extra CD images "Ark Development Suite", "Ark Extra Software", "Ark Server
Software" and "Ark Extra Languages", and of course in our large online
package repository, easily accessed through the Kynaptic GUI. Experienced
users can use the "apt-get" tool to install software from the repository on
the command line.

Comments

Looks really, really good. Any problems with SUSE (probably arising from former ximian camp), and i'm going for ark instantly.

KDE is probably the only truly free OSS desktop environment at the moment. It's relatively trivial to set it up with any Linux/BSD system, and you get a decent desktop experience with it out of the box. GNOME, as it is today, requires tons of experienced developer time to polish it up to be good enough for daily use. Shame, really.

Gnome is of course "truly open source". But I would agree that KDE is the only choice :-) It just has all the productivity tools that a professional web developer needs - and in my profession, no other DE offers the same level of network integration from the get go.

At present the installer doesn't allow for that level of partitioning. I've been designing a rethought out installer, however I can't take care of this until this summer when College lets out. We love to see more developers help us on this distro though.

Reminds me of the old phrase:
"Make a product that even an idiot can use, and only an idiot will want to."
Without an advanced option to install I can not use ARK, even though it looks the best of any distro for my needs.

I'm working on a new installer, sinc that seems to be the one complaint that I hear over and over. However, I would request that other developers help with this as well, since I'm a college undergrad and cannot devote all my time to working on it. If you're insterested in helping with the installer, email me.

Yeah but Debian hasn't had a stable release in years and requires too much fiddling. A developer does not necessarily want to be a systems administrator in his spare time. This is why the Ark Linux claim of being easy to use while being technically sane is interesting.

Please learn what 'stable', 'testing', and 'unstable' mean within the Debian jargon set before you start to make claims about not having a stable release. I have been running Debian 'testing' for some time now and it is VERY stable and is only a LITTLE laggy when it comes to getting new or upgraded software. The only time I have had any problems with it, is when I got greedy and decided to install a package from 'unstable' and it happened to cause a problem. Now, I use 'stable' for my server box, because I don't care when a new version of KDE comes out for it. It just needs to run mysql, apache and php. It gets the security patches and it keeps running strong. No worries, because I am not running anything new or not tried and tested. It is STABLE as in UNCHANGING. That is the idea of Debian 'stable', an unchanging platform on which you can rely. 'Unstable' is the first major distribution where things go. Then after meeting some criteria it graduates to 'testing'. Then when a new 'stable' is getting near, the doors to 'testing' are shut and things are nailed down. Then the new 'stable' becomes the solid 'testing' then 'testing' opens up for changes again and the process begins again.

'testing' is a rolling distribution that is not released in a traditional fashion. As individual pieces are found to work correctly in the 'unstable' distribution, and after they have met the required criteria, then these individual packages are released into 'testing'. So every weekend when I do my apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, I get the newest available packages from 'testing'

"debian-unstable or debian-testing will be at least as stable as the official versions these distributions have to offer."

I would agree for the most part, but it is unfortunately comments like these that can lead to problems.

'testing' is the way to go, unless you must always have the bleeding edge and are willing to deal with the bleeding that comes when 'unstable' actually is UNSTABLE with broken packages and the like, (though it doesn't tend to stay that way for long).

'testing' is often not far behind 'unstable' and is MUCH more friendly. I have had NO issues since I have stuck with 'testing'.

When it comes to using Debian for a desktop that is connected to the Internet, only 'unstable' will do.

If you were to use 'stable', the backports that you would be tempted to use would render your system less stable than 'unstable'.

If you were to use 'testing', you would really have to monitor the security web site / mailing list and be prepared to take your system off line when something serious comes along.

You will also find that in addition to the large official repository, 'unstable' has the largest number of third-party packages available (if you use those, you will probably have some trouble eventually though).

And it is not in any way unstable, at least by desktop standards. Just use it. Yes, it will take a little bit of knowledge.

What kind of developer judges a distro by screenshots? And if you do go by screenshots, the one that says "Multiple logical devices can be assoziated with a single piece of hardware" doesn't offer much confidence in quality control.

"The goal of Ark Linux is to build the easiest to use GNU/Linux distribution while keeping it technically sane"

I don't want to flame a new discussion here but if you look for free, KDE based and easiest to use GNU/Linux distribution, you should also consider Turkix . But as for the "technically sane" argument, I have nothing to say.. Just look at these screenshots;

I strongly believe in supoprting small businesses and giving startups a chance in this world of total corparatization and globalization. When using Linux I use Suse (now Novell, hence corparatized), and I would like to know what advantages there are to using a startup like ArkLinux instead.

Specifically, what kind of program packages can be used with Ark (debian or RedHat I presume?)? If, for example, Ark is redhat-based, then does it keep in sync with them for program installation purposes? Does Ark make system maintainace as easy as YAST?

What scares me about diving into a new distribution is worries about package installation. I do not use Linux extensively these days:-( but really want to; installing/removing programs remains a big issue for me. I want to jut be able to download e.g., Xine and have it work without fighting dependencies etc. Suse will probably be easier to deal with in this regard, but I want to remain open to other possibilities. I just don't have the time to spend weeks fighting to configure my distribution.

The Ark Website does not seem to answer these questions. Can someone in the know provide some information to these and related questions?

don't do it if you don't want to see yourself compiling alot of the packages you want. ark doesn't have such a huge repository of software debian or fedora have. and its rpm based, so you'll run into dependencie troubles for sure, if you install non-offical packages (eg segfaults and the like).

if you want a huge database of easy-to-install software, go for (K)ubuntu or debian itself.

ark is nice, but I rather see people working on an ubuntu-like project (keep in touch with your roots, contribute back to mommy) instead of reall forks or fully do-it-yourself distro's. thats quite an duplication of efforts. Ark has some cool things, but if they would implement these on top of debian, they'll have a lot less work just keeping their software up-to-date and testing it, so they can work on their installer and configuration software.

the first gentoo'ers should have done the same, imho. extend apt with the features they wanted, instead of doing all this work, while only a fraction of it is original and good (emerge and some tools surrounding it). THEY should have created apt-source...

With Debian you'll likely find yourself in a never-ending cycle of updates, no security and constant breakages. Forget trying to develop on this mess and deploying it to other distributions that are actually USED by people.